Little Girl Lost
by Skyraptor66
Summary: A brief series of diary entries by Manah pre-Drakengard 2. T for some sexual implications.


_Dude meets Manah. Dude is fascinated by Manah. Dude is fucking pissed about how Manah's arc comes to an end in Drakengard 2, so dude tries to construct a better portrait of her pre-game. There is literally no specific time frame for all of these entries, so certain sections could very well be whole years apart. I'll leave all that up to your own interpretation. Likewise, I tried to make the language weird and repetitive in parts to match someone who isn't all that well-versed in writing. Hopefully I managed to make her voice mature a bit over the course of the entries._

_I do not own the Drakengard series. If I did, Nowe would've been replaced by a fantasy version of the guy from Drive. _

1.

My name is Manah. I do not know much else. I came out of a river. I can write and I can read. That's why Allis gave me this empty book, because I'm the only one here who can use it. The Knights don't let us have many things, so I think she might have stolen it. Because not many of us can read or write, we don't have much history. The history we know, we tell to each other, in remembrance of why we are forced to live in these districts. The Knights won't let us forget, either. I suppose that's one thing they let us have.

I live with Allis in a small cottage barely big enough for the two of us. She took me in after they found me in the gorge, washed up from the rapids. I don't know my mother, but I must have had one. Sometimes I think hard on the word: mother, mother. If I think hard enough, and repeat it enough in my mind, I can feel something deep within me. It's dark and it hurts, but it's all I have. I hate it, but it's all I have. I suppose I also had a father, but not many people seem to have fathers that stay long enough, so I guess he doesn't really matter. Someone must have been good to me, though, because I can write.

Mostly I concentrate on helping Allis. She makes pots and things out of clay from the gorge, and she's taught me how to make a few cups though I'm not very good. Sometimes I feel like there must be some kind of magic she uses, but it's just her hands, which are rough and old. Her hands seem to contain her whole life in between the wrinkles and the knobby bones. I like them: they have a history. My hands are soft, but that's because I'm only fifteen or sixteen. I'm not quite sure which. Allis says sixteen, because I'm just old enough for men to give me odd looks when I can't see them. I felt nervous when she said this. I hate it when I'm stared at, especially when it's because of my eyes. Maybe they look at me because of my eyes, and not the fact that I'm a woman now. The thought bothers me whenever I go out for errands. Perhaps if I make an ugly face at them, they'll think I'm mad and leave me alone like they do Kris, who drinks rotgut and sleeps on the streets until the Knights beat him awake for sport.

They are cruel to us, the Knights. But they say we deserve it. I don't know if I truly do deserve it, because I can't remember anything before coming out of the river. Some of the village children are far too young to have ever been in the war between the Empire and the Union, so do they deserve it too?

2.

Mrs. Paran told me a story today. Mrs. Paran is a kind woman, but half mad herself. They say her children all died of starvation not long after they were born, and that her husband was arrested by the Knights for some crime and never came back. She seems to like it when I visit her, though, so I come by often even though she treats me like a little girl.

She said she knew a story of a child who came from a river like me, but as an infant floating in a basket. When the child came of age, she set out to find her real parents, having been raised by a kind farmer. She decided to follow the river upstream, though the farmer told her not to, for the rapids were wild and dangerous. She was determined and clever, however, so she pulled herself up the river using a mechanism of ropes that she devised herself. When she came to a village on the northern shores, no one there recalled anyone with her face, nor did they know of an abandoned child. The villagers spoke of a forest at the end of the river, saying that it was too dangerous for her to venture into on her own, but she ignored them saying, "I must know where I came from, no matter how dangerous the path."

In the forest, the child noticed that it was eerily silent. Creatures prowled just out of the corner of her eyes, but never came near her. She soon realized that they were afraid of her, but why? Some time later, the largest of the beasts approached her and said, "You must leave this forest now. You are not welcome here."

"Why?" the child asked. "I've simply come here because I want to know where I come from."

The great beast jerked its fanged head at a tree, whose trunk was hollow and led down to a hole deep in the earth. "If you insist, your answer is there, but you will not like it. Perhaps it is best if you leave right now and never come back."

"But I came all this way," the girl argued. "I must know, or my journey will have been in vain."

"Very well," the beast said, and let her pass. The child approached the tree and lowered herself into the hole whose blackness went on for miles.

Nobody knows what the child found there. She returned to the village on the shore, but spoke to no one. The old farmer pulled her body from the river days later, her pockets filled with stones that she had put into them herself. Her face held such an expression of sadness and horror that he did not mourn her long before he buried her near the same river from which she had come.

Mrs. Paran went silent after she told me this. Then she laughed a horrible laugh that I will never forget.

I know that I am that child.

3.

I met a boy. His name is Erik and he has kind eyes, though he is a mage's squire to the Knights that guard the district. I thought of Allis and the others when I spoke to him, but he seems gentle and doesn't join the other Knights in tormenting the martyrs or beating Kris. He says he wants to help the people here as well as care for the seals. We talked for a very long time, even though I was supposed to be getting clay from the river for Allis. He told me about magic and even showed me a spell. He says he'll teach me, because I have the look of a mage myself. I think he fancies me, because he tried to kiss me before we parted ways. When I ducked away from him, he laughed gently, and I felt better even though my cheeks were burning. I think he means no harm, but I shan't tell Allis. The thought of his smile makes me feel warm and odd, though not in a bad way. Perhaps I should be ashamed, but I'm not. There are so many Knights, they cannot all be cruel.

4.

Magic takes practice, Erik says, but I am better at it than he thinks. Perhaps better than him, though I feel immodest when I admit it. We found a place by the river where we can practice on our own, because the cliffs block us from view. I once blasted a pondful of water from the river high into the air with a burst of black magic. Erik smiled so brightly then that I let him kiss me before he left. I don't think I've ever been kissed by anyone before, and it made me happy.

I feel bad because I am not as helpful to Allis as I could be. She had been good to me by giving me a home and food to eat, even though she has little. Some days, we do not eat at all, and Erik cannot sneak anything from the Knight's supplies without being caught. Allis and I are already thin. Soon we shall wear away into nothing.

When I am hungriest, I have terrible nightmares. I dream of infants with sharp teeth that gnash and bite. They tell me that they love me, but their voices are deep and frightening. They are not gentle the way Erik was when he kissed me and made me feel warm again. They are not even like Allis when she cares for me. They are hungry, like me, but their hunger seeks to swallow me up.

I hate them, but still they follow me in my sleep.

5.

The Knights executed Kris for speaking out against them. The man was drunk and sick to death of the beatings, and so he cursed them and the general Oror along with the whole of the Shrine from which the Knights all come.

They made us all watch as they burned him alive in the village center. I held on to Allis's arm and the smell made me ill, but I was not terribly bothered, even as his skin curled into ash. I felt sadness and anger for Kris, but his death did not make me sick or bring me to turn away like it did the others.

We do not need them. We do not need any of them. The Knights imprison us in these districts, but for what reason? If they'd teach us, we could live peacefully and protect the seals together without the need for sacrifices.

I said this to Erik, and he seemed cross with me. He said that the crimes of the war shouldn't be forgotten. I said that in war, neither side is innocent, because all kill for the sake of their own. The Knights have not stopped their killing, though they have long since won. He would not speak to me after that. We've been together long since we met by river, and done things I hadn't with any other person, but in that moment I felt afraid of him.

What do the Knights tell Erik that makes him believe we are so much less than people? And what does he truly think of me? I still love his eyes, but my red eyes make him nervous. I can tell by the way he won't look at them for long. Perhaps there is something the Knights fear about all of us, something they cannot let us know.

Perhaps that fear is the key to our freedom, but I cannot tell Erik about such thoughts.

6.

I feel ill, because Erik has become so strange to me now. His presence is uncomfortable and leering, like the other male knights who watch me sometimes. He comes close, though. I used to like it when he came close, but his eyes are no longer kind. I pulled away when he tried to kiss me, and he became angry. He threatened me, saying that I was a martyr and should obey him. I told him that I'd done nothing, and that he was being cruel like the others. His face changed then, and he apologized, but I could still see the hardness in his eyes.

I don't dare go out to our place by the river any more, though I still practice magic in a hiding spot of my own. If Erik has told the other Knights about me, they have not come after me yet. Mrs. Paran once said that young magic is a dangerous thing without guidance. But I like magic; it's something alive and comforting, like a smooth animal, yet also wild. It listens to me though, and I like to let it free. We have a kinship like old friends who perhaps met long ago.

I am a girl and a martyr, but I am powerful with my magic. I fear my own boldness, for I do not know how long I will be able to stay silent with my abilities by my side. If only the other martyrs could discover the powers within themselves, even if it is not magic like mine.

7.

When I came home last night, Allis was crying. I could tell from the bottle on the floor that she had gotten to some of the rotgut somehow. She told me a lot of things I don't like to think about: how her baby was fathered by a Union man and she had drowned it. She didn't know why, but for some reason the alcohol made her remember. She said, "Your eyes are red. They're red just like theirs" and sobbed in a way that frightened me. I wish I knew what she meant, but she will not speak of it now.

Perhaps I shall leave, but I cannot. This place is so filled with horror and tragedy. This is what the Knights have brought upon us. We remain weak only because the ones above us give is nothing. I want to give us something. I want a future for us that is not made from the past.

8.

I've killed him. I don't know how it happened so quickly, but I did it. I didn't feel bad at first, because of the way he was touching me, and how strange and cruel he had become. He said the offering was late again, and that he had authority as a knight to extract a fee of his choosing. He lays on his own sword now because of the spell I used, but now they will come looking for me. I am sure they will try to find me, or perhaps kill Allis to draw me out. I must leave, and I must make a show of it so they will know I am gone. They won't hurt Allis if I let them know I have gone.

Gods forgive me.

9.

I sleep now in the District of Soul Flame. They have not pursued me, but I will not hide. I will leave my past upstream of the river and make my own history here. Whatever lies beneath the earth for me, whether I'm a demon or simply a lost child, matters not. This District is just as cruel as all the others, the Knights just as exploitative, and the misery just as palpable. But I have the power within me to bring change.

I'm not afraid anymore. I used to fear the Knights, but most of all I feared my own past. What I lived then cannot be worse than what is being wrought by the powers now, and so I begin. May the red of my eyes sear into those who would stop me, and be beacons of kindness for the ones they harm.

I shall keep this journal for what little it contains, but now is what truly matters above all else.


End file.
